How To Grow Garlic (About Garlic Without Secrets. Part 2)

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

What problems arise when growing this beloved culture in Russia

1. Heard in a private conversation: “Well, here's another, I'll be in the garden bed with a pitchfork: dig this one, don't dig this one. If you don't dig it, the stem will break off "

It seems like a serious argument. Why don't I have such a problem? It turns out that I never thought about it. I began to analyze. I pull out most of the plants without using a pitchfork or shovel. Some break off. Those that are unripe. Their roots are much stronger. So again we came to the need for selective cleaning: ripe specimens are more easily pulled out, and we do not pull out unripe ones yet.

Here are a few more recommendations that I cannot agree with because my experience proves otherwise:

2. "It makes no sense to plant teeth with damaged scales, since when they hit the ground, they begin to rot"

It has been tested many times in practice - teeth planted even without scales develop normally, just like those planted in a shell.

3. "It is harmful to cover the planting with a thick layer of insulation: the seedlings cannot break through and die"

For many years I have been covering plantings of winter garlic with poplar foliage with a layer of 15 cm. Poplar leaves are large and denser (than, for example, on birch or maple). In the spring, "armor" is 3-4 cm thick on the garden bed. But garlic easily breaks through these leaves. It does not push it apart, but pierces it like an awl. Other cultures are not capable of this.

4. "Winter garlic can be propagated in two ways: with chives and air bulbs, and spring garlic - only with chives."

Garlic may become lumpy and non-lumpy depending on conditions. In my practice, arrows grew twice on spring garlic. In 2010, the bulbs did not ripen on spring. But in 2007 they matured. The next year they were planted and gave very small (1-2 cm in diameter) heads. Subsequent reproduction did not lead to anything good - the heads were consistently very small.

5. “Fertilizers for garlic are best applied in liquid form. The roots of garlic, going down, often starve due to the fact that all the humus is concentrated at the top"

Roots do not have the ability to branch

I do not use any fertilizers and dressings. The soil is not dug up, the most fertile layer is the top five centimeters. Judging by the size of the heads, the garlic is not starving. If you carefully dig in the head and examine the roots, then it is easy to see that the roots are not purely string-like, but there are lateral branches. Perhaps this is the effect of using no-till technology.

6. “Bubbles should be soaked in water for a day before planting. Pop-ups - delete"

Hydrosorting is desirable not only for bulbs, but also for planting teeth and one-tooth teeth. Once I threw a bowl of large (3-4 cm in diameter) one-tooth into the water. About 10% surfaced. Dense, juicy bulbs to the touch, outwardly no different from the rest. I took off the "shirt" of several - there are no traces of disease. It seems that everything is the same as that of the drowned. Are they really bad? It's a pity to throw out such large one-toothed teeth … I conducted an experiment: I planted floating bulbs, one-toothed teeth and teeth on a separate piece of the garden. Result: seedlings no more than 15% of the planted material. The harvest is such that it would be better not to plant. But “swimmers” should not be thrown away - they can be used for food.

7. "For planting, you need to select the largest bulbs, small bulbs will give a small one-tooth"

Selection by size should only be made within the same variety. Indeed, some varieties, for example, "Autumn", produce very small bulbs - less than a match head. But then normal mono-teeth grow out of them.

8. “Inventive gardeners have come up with an economical way to grow garlic. Before planting, cut the cloves of winter garlic vertically in half so that each half-clove retains an approximately equal part of the bottom. The husk may shed. The slices are allowed to dry by dusting them with ash. And then they are planted in the same way as whole slices. As a result of such an economical planting, garlic heads of the same size are obtained, only the arrow is shifted from the center of the bulb to its edge"

Twice I tried to grow garlic from chopped cloves (just for fun) - none came up. Although quite a few halves of the teeth remained intact - they seemed to be mummified.

9. From a private correspondence: "Do you have a whole team working to collect leaves to cover two hundred square meters of garlic?"

For myself, I found a very simple and effective way to collect foliage. During a massive leaf fall, I go to the plantation in the field. At this time, a lot of foliage lies on the road. It is very easy to collect foliage from the road: the vegetation does not interfere, and there is no abundance of small twigs, as it happens under the trees. In addition, transport goes on field roads very rarely, you can be sure that the leaves are not stuffed with harmful substances.

10. "You can speed up the work of dividing the bulbs using a small pointed stick, which is inserted into the center of the bulb."

Quickly dividing the bulbs is adapted using a rounded knife. Covering scales are easy to remove. In this case, the teeth and "shirts" on the teeth are not injured. With the same knife, it is easy to divide the head into teeth.

11. “The books advise to plant chives at a shallow depth. But I have developed my own technique: I plant the planting material 30 cm into the soil"

“You can get large garlic only if it is planted deeply, not smaller than 15 centimeters. With a shallow planting, the heads grow small"

Perhaps these recommendations are suitable for sandy loam soils. For loams and clay, following these tips is the surest way to go without a crop. This is especially true for dug up clay soil. After watering, such soil becomes very compacted. And it is unlikely that you can then loosen the garden to a depth of 30 centimeters.

12. “It should be borne in mind the instruction of Professor VI Edelstein that winter garlic planted in spring grows with a whole bulb, or, as they say, an“apple”. I advise all experimenters to keep some of the winter chives until spring and plant them in order to test the possibility of obtaining round bulbs"

I experimented this way for several years. Changed planting dates from late April to late May. Conditions in different years were different. But the output of the one-toothed was extremely small. Less than 5%. More often, heads are formed that are not fully ripe. Quite often large enough.

13. "You cannot grow good garlic without watering on precipitation alone."

Undoubtedly, watering will increase the yield. But in my practice I received 100-gram heads without watering even in a dry year. Thanks to the mulch.

14. From private correspondence: “I get 4 kg of garlic per square meter. Landing pattern - 15x50 cm "I am interested:" How much does your head weigh on average? " "100 grams"

Perhaps I am not good at math. But with such a planting scheme, 13 plants will be placed on a square meter. This means that in order to obtain such a yield, the heads of garlic should weigh on average 300 grams. Each one. If they are 100 grams each, you get 1.3 kg per square meter. Let's pay close attention to the numbers.

15. “And I do not advise you to plant it denser: once again, one-tooth or bulbs will grow out of one-tooth, no larger than them. But when you plant 20x20 cm, you will have those very heads that are 100 grams each and … more"

And further:

When planting the teeth, I make the "distance" 12-15 cm from each other, and between the rows - 50 cm. Say, wide? Nothing of the kind, garlic is very picky about light and space. With a thickened planting, it will hurt, and the heads will grow "puny-skinny"

In my standard 50 cm wide garden bed, I always plant three rows of garlic. That is, a row from the rad is 20 cm. I experimented with distances in a row of 15, 20, 30 centimeters between large cloves - the yield is the same. 8 centimeters in a row - the yield is lower than at 15 cm. Everyone should find the optimal planting scheme in their own conditions. Why would the land be empty? For medium and small teeth, the schemes are already different. "Only the largest teeth should be taken for planting" - this is a must for selection. But … There are several observations.

When cooking, the wife often uses medium heads. For the simple reason that large chives do not fit into the garlic press.

I put a saucer with peeled garlic on the table: large cloves, medium and small. First, the small ones "left", then the medium ones, and the large ones remained lying. The next time, only the remaining large teeth lay on the saucer. But no one touched them. As soon as you put in a change, it was immediately used for its intended purpose.

At the market I sell garlic in bundles (500 grams each). There are several different bundles. In each bundle, the heads are selected of the same size, but their number is different (from 15 to 5 pieces depending on the weight). The most frequent question from buyers: "How many pieces are there in a bundle?" They take those bundles where there are more pieces. Although I warn you that the weight is the same.

So is it worth chasing very large heads? Maybe it is better to find conditions under which there will be a greater number of medium and even small heads? After all, even small heads of winter garlic cloves are convenient to clean - there are few of them in the head.